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The crux here is that hero is forced to do an action that is bad. Something we all recognize as evil. In the end it might be for the greater good, so the netto result of his action might be good but the act itself is bad.|
Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
I have a problem with this contest. See, from my point of view, if your actions have a good result, i.e. cause mostly good for the greatest amount of people, then it was a good action. How can I make an arc where a hero must perform an evil act if that act causes the greatest good? Yes, I can probably fake it. It's just hard for me to think of anything which will fulfill those criteria.
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For example. Sister Psy tells the hero that she had a dream of an evil person being born just now who will destroy the world. Will the hero act for the greater good to kill the still innocent baby and save the world from the man the baby will grow into? And what will the consequences of that action be? Will he be recognized as hero or villain here?
Like I said, I could probably fake it and use D&D morality or something but it seems too easy.
Also that's an example I wouldn't use in this challenge.
"Oh the baby would grow up to be worse than Hitler, really, I swear! Sister Psyche told me so!"
We're supposed to just take that for granted? How will we ever know that this was ever true, and how can we be sure there wasn't another solution?
"Oh well that's good then, have your baby-killing badge hero! Look, it says 'For killing future Hitler' on it so it's alright."
I don't think so. Time-travel and precognition are cheating. In this kind of scenario, even more so.
Oh yeah, that's another problem: "The crux here is that hero is forced to do an action that is bad." There is almost always another solution, the very least being not to take any action at all.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
Quote:
I gave this example in a different thread, but here you go.|
Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
Like I said, I could probably fake it and use D&D morality or something but it seems too easy.
Also that's an example I wouldn't use in this challenge. "Oh the baby would grow up to be worse than Hitler, really, I swear! Sister Psyche told me so!" We're supposed to just take that for granted? How will we ever know that this was ever true, and how can we be sure there wasn't another solution? "Oh well that's good then, have your baby-killing badge hero! Look, it says 'For killing future Hitler' on it so it's alright." I don't think so. Time-travel and precognition are cheating. In this kind of scenario, even more so. Oh yeah, that's another problem: "The crux here is that hero is forced to do an action that is bad." There is almost always another solution, the very least being not to take any action at all. |
Your character has been trying to track down information about a group of prisoners that are going to be executed at midnight. After a few tries with little info, finally the contact has managed to find a way to stop the execution. With only 15 minutes to go, you zone into the mission, rendezvous with another agent helping you, and then you find out that the plan is to kidnap the 6-year-old son of the higher-up military big honcho that's going to execute the prisoners, to then force their release by threatening said kid (really threatening him, you know).
You find this halfway through the mission. 15 minutes timed mission, remember. No time left to try some other plan, you either kidnap the kid or let the prisoners die.
Your character doesn't need to carry the idiot ball for this to happen, just your contact be a bit of a jackass (or, rather, more of a jackass than you thought he'd be). Feel free to write the return-dialog for either choice as the player character being pissed off, because regardless of the outcome, bad things happen.
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I didn't say that there was NO way to write this, just that there is almost always other solutions, and being forced to take one of the evil ones just for the sake of the story is bad. It's surely a bit of extra challenge to make this (bad) choice seem to be the only possible option.|
Originally Posted by Aliana Blue
Your character doesn't need to carry the idiot ball for this to happen, just your contact be a bit of a jackass (or, rather, more of a jackass than you thought he'd be). Feel free to write the return-dialog for either choice as the player character being pissed off, because regardless of the outcome, bad things happen.
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In your specific case I don't know who these prisoners are or who is threatening to execute them. If they are soldiers captured during a mission, the threat of dying is part of their job and they have accepted that when they signed up. Kidnapping and threatening children to protect their lives is not even on a long list of things I'd try first.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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I think it is an interesting challenge to make this into a believable and compelling story.
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Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
I didn't say that there was NO way to write this, just that there is almost always other solutions, and being forced to take one of the evil ones just for the sake of the story is bad. It's surely a bit of extra challenge to make this (bad) choice seem to be the only possible option.
In your specific case I don't know who these prisoners are or who is threatening to execute them. If they are soldiers captured during a mission, the threat of dying is part of their job and they have accepted that when they signed up. Kidnapping and threatening children to protect their lives is not even on a long list of things I'd try first. |
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It depends on wether you subscribe to 'the ends justify the means'. If for example a supervillain wired up a bomb to explode in Room X, which contains 100 randomly selected citizens, and said bombs only deactivation switch is controlled by Minion A, who is in Room Y somewhere unknown, and watching the Hero on CCTV. The hero is in Room Z with a 5-year old child. Minion A has an interesting history. He has been told that the 5-yr old is an automaton, and has been presented with 30 prior setups like this and been able to examine tge automatons to reassure him that no real child is harmed. He has been told this is an experiment designed to test some criminal reform program. The important point is that he doesn't think he's committing anything immoral. He is told to push button A if the hero kills the child before a certain time Or the and button b if the hero doesnt or if the cctv feed stops for any reason. He thinks the buttons just record the outcome.|
Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
I have a problem with this contest. See, from my point of view, if your actions have a good result, i.e. cause mostly good for the greatest amount of people, then it was a good action. How can I make an arc where a hero must perform an evil act if that act causes the greatest good? Yes, I can probably fake it. It's just hard for me to think of anything which will fulfill those criteria.
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Button a in fact deactivates the bomb. Button b sets it off.
The hero knows everything i've just explained, apart from the location of room x or room y.
He has 30 seconds left on the timer.
What does he do?
Eco
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
[The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."
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The challenge sounds to me like 'make One More Day good'. You can spin it however way you want, Peter Parker is still making a freakin' deal with the devil.|
Originally Posted by GrinningSpade
I think it is an interesting challenge to make this into a believable and compelling story.
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I'll probably still try and participate if I can squeeze in the time mind, but I'll likely write something so from the far left-field just to make it work, it may get me disqualified altogether for circumventing the rules.
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Yes, of course. I said that I have a problem because of my point of view, which is very close to - if not entirely - utilitarian. Granted, I might not personally be able to kill a child to save a hundred lives, so I might not be able to live up to the tenets of this philosophy. I've never been in a situation where I've been required to kill anyone so I don't know if I would be able to do it. A hero on the other hand is someone who, in my opinion, is supposed to be able to make these difficult decisions. What all this means is that in this situation I find it hard to consider the act of killing the child as an evil act since it in fact saves a hundred lives. |
Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan
It depends on wether you subscribe to 'the ends justify the means'.
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In reality I would probably not be able to kill the child and would just stand around, possibly pleading with the guy on the other end of the camera to not press a button but in this game I can play a hero who actually makes these choices and takes the responsibility for his actions and kills the child after ruling out all other solutions as impossible. And I couldn't say that he has been forced to commit an evil act, according to my utilitarian philosophy.
Naturally this is probably beyond the scope of the challenge and certainly outside the morality presented by the game in general (although I can't readily say what that morality is supposed to be). I don't really think we need to spend more time talking about it here - except for the purpose of entertainment of course.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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Guess I'm out... again...
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Originally Posted by Zombie Man
More specifically:
I assume that since Washington DC is a district and not a territory that its residents can enter? |
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I think it gets even more morally interesting if we say that the child is the hero's son. Heroes would readily off themselves if it was 'you or them', but 'the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few' gets weighted differently under different circumstances.
I'm partly in agreement with you in that since there's almost always going to be a greater good, the other option might be justifiable. Or that might just be a cop-out.
Eco
MArcs:
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The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
[The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."
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Quote:
I'm not sure if it changes the morality of the situation or action but it certainly adds a whole other emotional dimension to it.|
Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan
I think it gets even more morally interesting if we say that the child is the hero's son.
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Quote:
| I'm partly in agreement with you in that since there's almost always going to be a greater good, the other option might be justifiable. Or that might just be a cop-out. |
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One villainous heroic arc coming right up, Doc! 
I'm just about finishing up mine.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
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I think you missed the point of the example. In the example your hero is not told that he's off to kidnap someone, it's the jerkass contact who sets it up, and it is the last thing that is tried, mere minutes before the deadline. Who the soon-to-be-executed people are is not very relevant (pick whoever you want), the point is that it's possible to frame the story so that your hero has to choose between two evils because there are no more options, if you don't want to "force" certain style of roleplaying on other people's characters. That's what the contact is for.
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Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
In your specific case I don't know who these prisoners are or who is threatening to execute them. If they are soldiers captured during a mission, the threat of dying is part of their job and they have accepted that when they signed up. Kidnapping and threatening children to protect their lives is not even on a long list of things I'd try first.
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What does that have to do with it, ZM? The contest doesn't say it's the CONTACT that is the hero -- it says "Write an arc where a hero must do evil for the 'greater good'."|
Originally Posted by Zombie Man
You do know that Dr. B is a villain in CoH lore, right? Just don't want you to waste a lot of time.
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I don't see how Dr. Brainstorm couldn't be the contact and the hero who does evil for the greater good not be the player (from the standpoint of the story), or perhaps an NPC within the story.
And yes, Chad knows EXACTLY who Dr. B is.
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Quote:
(Sorry for the late reply, lost this thread for a while and Eric mentioned that you commented on my post.)|
Originally Posted by Zombie Man
You do know that Dr. B is a villain in CoH lore, right? Just don't want you to waste a lot of time.
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Nothing specifically says he's a villain. His background and the Wiki information states that he's worked all over the world with both heroes and villains and is currently operating out of the Rogue Isles. In my arc he talks briefly about how he left the Rogue Isles because Dr. Aeon was trying to steal his research (the first mission requires you to go back and steal a briefcase from his old lab), so he can continue his experiments in his new Paragon City lab (under the Phalanx's watchful eyes).
The arc has generally gotten good feedback for it being my first attempt, published the day Issue 14 went live. The most common complaint I've gotten was, "This is stupid, why would my hero be doing a job for Dr. Brainstorm, he's a freakin' villain!"
In a perfect world, the way I originally planned the arc (back in November 2007, it was intended to be a TF with 13 missions--aren't you glad you don't have to play that?) had him moved into Pocket D in exchange for revamping DJ Zero's sound system.
The bottom line is, I did my research on the character, and I don't have any qualms about him giving out heroically-themed missions, especially because the intent was to do things a little more shadily than the standard hero content.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!
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Just a friendly advice to whomever will be judging these arcs and us players as well. I played two arcs now that have accepted this challenge and by their nature these arcs are designed to be emotional as they are about making horrible choices. I am not going to play more then 1 of these arcs per day and maybe less. This to avoid getting desensitized about things and that would be a shame.
Good luck all, look forward to playing the arcs 
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Love this idea, and I'm 3/5 of the way finished my first draft. I'm so stoked about the story that has developed around this idea that I am actually dusting off the word 'stoked' just for the occassion.
Why is time travel a cop out? So the ITF, Ouroborus, and alternate realities, which deal with a split in timelines from altering the past are also out?
I hate to use something recently put out, but Water of Mars, the latest Dr. Who episode deals with that.. if you know a terrible event is to happen, can you stand by and watch people die who you know are intended to?
Not saving a person from a death you know about is pretty evil...
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The example given in this thread was that someone has a vision of the future where a child born today grows up to become a terrible person who brings suffering to thousands or millions. |
Originally Posted by Equation
Why is time travel a cop out?
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The problem with this scenario is that if the visionary is not always 100 percent correct then we can't know that the child actually will become this terrible scourge. It's possible that the vision is false, or that the fortune teller is lying, or insane. In either case it would be wrong to punish someone for a crime they have not yet committed and may never commit!
However, if the vision is true and infallible and the visionary is known to always be correct then there is nothing you can do about it. The child will survive and become a monster no matter what. And if you can change that by merely killing the child, then the vision was false to begin with and the whole premise for going about to kill the child was once again based on lies or the ramblings of an insane person.
Time-travelling is a cop-out because we KNOW the results of the past events; we live in them. We are the infallible fortuneteller by virtue of having seen the actual events already happen. However, should we decide to go back and change something our "vision" of the future becomes a lie and we can't justify our actions based on that lie anymore than we could justify our actions based on those of the infallible fortuneteller.
To the people of the past we are just murderers, of a child no less, and all our claims about how the child would grow up to become a terrible leader and cause the death of millions are mere fantasies which can't be confirmed in any reasonable manner. And the millions of people we supposedly saved were not threatened by that child, they never were. Hitler as a child was harmless.
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| Not saving a person from a death you know about is pretty evil... |
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
Dunno kind of on the fence for this type of challenge. I mean for me it’s almost like your hero went out and blew up a building BUT they did it for the greater good, damn Lost won’t live there now!
Also don’t get why there are restrictions on who can submit and who cannot. Is that not the purpose of a challenge, to have everyone involved?
Anyways, good luck to those who can enter.